The discourse around ‘flexible working’ has degenerated into a narrow debate over whether people come into the office on three days of the week or four. But this risks distracting us from a more interesting question: do people work better in parallel or in series?
When the pandemic hugely accelerated the adoption of video-calling, many people took to comparing the quality of meetings carried out via video with those conducted face to face. In general, they divide into two camps: those who believe that there is no substitute for meeting in person, and those who concede there are some disadvantages to meeting on a screen, but suggest these are far outweighed by the time and cost savings.
This is a perfectly natural comparison to make. We are, after all, drawn to like-for-like comparisons. We call Olympic champion swimmers ‘fast’ because they are faster than other swimmers. But this illusion would be shattered if televised Olympic swimming events showed someone on foot keeping pace with the participants poolside. We would then see that champion swimmers are easily outpaced by almost anyone who can break into a gentle jog.
When we use words like ‘fast’, it pays to ask ‘fast compared with what?’ And comparing a video-call to a physical meeting, while it seems the obvious comparison to make, is in fact largely fallacious, because in most cases the video-calls do not replace what would have been a physical meeting. They are conversations which in the real world would never have taken place, or else would have taken place over a vastly protracted timescale in some asynchronous medium – typically email.
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